Chapter 13 - Forty-Eight Hours
The fraud investigator gave us forty-eight hours.
Not because the case would disappear afterward.
Because another payment connected to Daniel’s company was scheduled to clear.
A deposit on Carmen’s house.
420,000 pesos.
If the seller received it, recovering the money would become far more complicated.
The problem was the account.
Some of the transferred funds had been mixed with legitimate marital income.
Daniel’s attorney argued that freezing everything would be unfair.
Lucía argued that the scheduled payment was part of a pattern of unauthorized diversion.
The bank required documentation.
Fast.
For two days, my life became timestamps.
Transfers.
Receipts.
Messages.
Contracts.
I barely slept.
Camila stayed with my mother.
Before leaving, she hugged my neck.
“Mommy, are you working again?”
The question stabbed me.
I knelt.
“Yes.”
Her face changed.
I knew that look now.
Fear.
“But I’m coming back tonight.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
And I did.
At 2:00 a.m., after reviewing the final statements, I drove across town just to sleep beside her.
The next morning, Lucía found what we needed.
The seafood dinner.
The one that started everything.
The restaurant charge had been placed on the same account Daniel later used as evidence that his company had “business entertainment expenses.”
A family feast had been falsely categorized as corporate spending.
So had Valeria’s shopping.
So had hotel rooms.
So had Carmen’s furniture deposits.
The accounting structure Daniel created to hide the transfers was collapsing under its own stupidity.
At 3:47 p.m., the bank froze the payment.
Carmen lost the house deposit.
She called me seventeen times.
I did not answer.
Then she called my mother.
That was a mistake.
My mother listened quietly while Carmen screamed that I was destroying the family.
Then she said:
“My granddaughter was eating stale bread outside while you ate lobster.”
Carmen hung up.
I wish the story had ended there.
Instead, at 6:20 p.m., Lucía called.
“Mariana, where is Camila?”
“With my mother.”
“Go there now.”
My stomach dropped.
“Why?”
“Daniel missed his supervised parenting appointment.”
“He didn’t cancel?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
May you like
Then Lucía said the sentence that sent me running for my keys.
“His phone was last detected near your mother’s neighborhood.”
